The Bet and The Lottery are short stories by Anton Chekhov and Shirley Jackson, respectively. They have about three things in common. First, they are both short stories. Second, they have titles related to gambling. Third, and most relevant to this post, I have read them both recently. (And no, not because I was planning a trip to Vegas.)
I read The Lottery because my roommate mentioned it, and I do tend to read short stories I hear of. Books take too much time, but short stories...why not? Well, because The Lottery, that's why not. Why would you write this? Why?
SPOILER ALERT: Are you trying to illustrate how horrible human sacrifice is by placing it in a modern setting? Is anyone really wondering if human sacrifice is horrible? Is the whole thing some sort of screed against conformity and tradition? If so, is it really possible anyone would continue living in that town? Move out, already! Why did you write this?? END SPOILER
To be fair to my roommate, she did not, in fact, recommend this story to me. We were talking about Greek mythology, and then the story of the minotaur, and then Hunger Games, and then she mentioned The Lottery, and I was curious so I looked it up. I spent an hour on humor websites trying to clear my system of it after I did.
I read The Bet because it was mentioned in a magazine I read. The author of the article gave some information about the setup of the story and then said something along the lines of, "but it would be a crime against literature to spoil the ending." So of course I had to go read that one.
It was good. Not amazing, but good. (And, to be fair, most of the stories I think are amazing have laser weapons. I'm not much of a connoisseur of literature.) It had some interesting ideas in it, and the ending was fairly satisfying. I don't know that it would be a crime against literature to spoil it, but I will defer to the judgement of the author of the article in the magazine on this matter and say no more.
Take the bet, but don't play the lottery.
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